


Memories of a Lifetime

by mindinmarianatrench



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, M/M, Post Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 22:58:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8942914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindinmarianatrench/pseuds/mindinmarianatrench
Summary: Basically an epilogue for Supernatural, told by Cas.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhh... Hi?

Cas fingered the faded photograph and used his grace to fix it. He still has other photos, kept safely in his wallet, but this one was his favorite. It was of him and Dean, leaning shoulder to shoulder and laughing together. He couldn't really remember what they were laughing at, but thanks to Sam who turned out to be a great photographer, he has lots of photos of his family and something to remind him the feeling of love and happiness. Faded and faint they may be but those feelings were the only thing that anchored his sanity, his… humanity in this angelic life.

"Teacher," a familiar voice interrupted Cas's melancholic musings. It was Ebbriel, one of his younger angel charges. "Ebby, I told you to call me by my name outside of the classrooms. Here, we are brothers, not teacher and student. What do you need of me, brother?" Cas asked as he put the photo back in his trench coat pocket, over his heart. Ebbriel watched him curiously but didn't comment on that. "I'm sorry if I've interrupted you... Castiel. I was hoping that you could spar with me and point out and of my weakness again," he said instead. "Of course, brother. But only after you finished your Gospel readings. I noticed you've been slacking in that subject," Cas said. "... Balls! Fine, I'll hold you to that, Teacher," Ebbriel said and mumbled a small thank you before leaving. Cas watched him leave with a wistful smile, knowing that the familiar cursing was unintentional. Maybe the soul can subconsciously remember who they were before after all…

It was few hundred years ago, just few years after the death of Jesse Turner, the Antichrist, of old age that God finally came back to Heaven. Chuck, as he insisted the angels to call him, put Heaven back into order. Angels now got their wings back, those who were worthy were promoted into a new order of archangels, others reassigned into new departments and new angels were formed to fill in the gaps. New codes and regulations were established, better version of personal heaven organization were introduced, headcounts of human souls to make sure none were missing… And it was then when He discovered that Bobby's soul was subjected to torture by a small sect of the angels, for helping Cas and Sam breaking Metatron out of Heaven's jail.

After the angels were dealt with, Chuck gave Bobby the option to go back to his personal heaven or be reborn as an angel, tasked to protect the humans for eternity. Bobby, being himself all had chosen the second option, hoping to continue to protect what his surrogate sons, Sam and Dean Winchester had sacrificed so much for to save. When Cas found out about Bobby, he requested to be assigned to the newly formed Ebbriel, as both a penance for his failure to protect him in the Winchester brothers’ stead and a selfish need to hold on to a thread that connected him to Dean. Chuck then made a counter offer, for Cas to be a Teacher and teach all the newly formed angels of humanity and free will so that they can better protect the human in the future.

 

 

“... And that concludes today’s lessons. Any questions, brothers and sisters?” Cas asked after finishing his lectures. His charges had grown up so fast and soaked the lessons like sponge. They were going to be sorted into more specialized course, taught by other angels, Cas after all was just a soldier and not a reaper or cupid and did not have the necessary power. “Teacher, please tell us more about the Winchester brothers,” Laylah asked, followed by the chorus of the others’ agreement. Cas did not let them see the pain in his eyes, he had mastered the art of concealing his emotions from his face long ago but sometimes they show up unexpectedly. “Didn’t you had enough of them from the Winchester Gospel? You guys begged me to stop talking about them last week,” Cas joked. “No, no, no, we’ve had enough of that, Teacher. We’re curious about what happened after all those fighting and history bits. We wanted to know the men after the hunting. Did they find their happy ending? Did you visit them even after you finished your missions with them?” Ebbriel asked. In the end, Cas decided to tell his students about Sam and Dean, of the things that happened after and not recorded in the gospel. For one reason only. Because Bobby deserved to hear what happened to his boys. That they were happy.

The bunker had become a home for Cas. Dean and Sam no longer actively hunt, using the Men of Letter’s resources to establish a more efficient hunters’ and worldwide Men of Letter’s web of information and organization. They were the new Bobby and a continuation of legacies. Cas had his own missions from above, mostly hunting for artifacts that were hidden by Balthazar but at the end of the day, it was the bunker where he went back to. Dean would conscript Cas’s and Sam’s help in the kitchen in the guise of teaching them how to cook and later Sam would retaliate by teaching Dean the intricacies of computer work and then asked him to teach Cas afterwards. By the end of the year, both Sam and Cas were able to cook simple fares and yet Dean and Cas still cannot even hack into social media sites. On another note though, Dean did accidentally curse a computer virus to mutate and almost caused another Y2K meltdown.

After a rare Christmas hunt where the brothers kept telling Cas anecdotes of their previous Christmases, especially the one they were almost got eaten by pagan gods, they decided to enjoy a Christmas celebration at a nearby town. There, Cas saw a familiar face. It was a cherubim named Aeriel and she came with words from above. The soulmates of the Winchesters will be coming to the celebration that night, it was her task to pair them and Castiel was not to interfere, for the pairing orders were handed down from the Fates themselves. So Cas stood aside when that time came, two ladies who flirted with Cas before Cas himself introduced them to Dean and Sam. After Aeriel, disguised as the waitress, finished her job as cupid Cas immediately left, citing a call from the Heaven. That whole week, Cas spent the whole time staring at nothing while sitting on a floating dock at the lake Dean once dreamed of.

Dean and Sam did not really question his disappearing act and for that Cas was thankful. They immediately filled him in about Elena and Anita, who were best friends who had decided to move to that town together. Now and again, the brothers invited the ladies to join them for drinks and food and honestly, Cas enjoyed his interactions with them. They were good for the brothers. Before, Cas could count the number of real smiles that graced Dean’s lips and now with Elena, it was as if it was one continuous smile that lasted for forever. Sam became a more open person and began a new hobby, photography. Elena and Anita even took their initiation to the supernatural world in strides, managing to kill a vampire before Sam and Dean crashed in and hunt the rest of the nest that dared to breathe the same air as their girlfriends’. They moving in to the bunker came not long after that. Though it was subtle, as time goes by, he began to limit his time with the brothers particularly with Dean.

It helped that Cas really did have a reason for leaving for longer stretch of time. Jesse Turner, or better known to the Heaven as the Antichrist, had reached out to him for help. They met again when Cas was stricken with insanity and teleported to Australia to observe the bees in that continent. Though really wary of Cas at the time, Jesse also looked after him during his stay there, after Cas accidentally wandered to a bee farm where Jesse worked by making the humans there ‘forget’ about Cas most of the time and taught him how to collect honey. Though they lost contact after Cas was sent to Purgatory with Dean after killing Dick Roman, after the furor between Chuck and Amara were resolved, Cas managed to reach out to Jesse and stayed in touch until now. Dean and Sam knew about his pen pal Jesse from Perth, Australia, and even teased Cas about him but did not connect him to Jesse Turner. And now, Jesse’s power started to evolve and became erratic, despite no longer being influenced by Lucifer’s presence.

So Cas moved his main base to Australia, to help Jesse control his power and minimize its impact to the surrounding humans. From time to time, especially when Jesse can get away from his studies, they went back to America. Cas to Dean and Sam, Jesse to his former hometown to watch both his adoptive parents and his real mother from afar. Cas offered to re-introduce Jesse to the brothers but he declined, preferring not get more mixed up with the past. It was during one of such trips that Sam and Dean requested Cas’s help to surprise their girlfriends with a proposal. Not long after that, Cas was Sam’s best man during his wedding to Anita. And later, for Dean’s wedding, it was Cas who gave a very pregnant Elena away to Dean. Charlie Jo and John Robert Winchester were born on a very stormy Thursday evening, three weeks after Dean and Elena’s wedding. Sam and Anita got competitive and gave the world Kevin, Maryanne and Judith Winchester over the course of five years. Casey Henry Winchester evened the score between the brothers on year six.

As Jesse managed to take better control of his power, Cas spends more time with the Winchester broods in America. Dean and Sam taught their children about the supernatural world and trained them enough to protect themselves and the people around them, but did not force any of them into being either a hunter or a Men of Letter. Cas sparred with the broods regularly, playing the part of supernatural beings. Other than that, Cas was very mindful of his interactions with the Winchesters, especially when he realized that his friends had begun to show their age while his vessel did not. It was then that Cas decided to cut himself off from the Winchesters and only watched them from afar.

Long after the broods had gone and created their own legacies, Elena was the first one to succumb to death, devastating Dean. Cas went to the funeral but the only comfort that Cas could offer him was that her soul was in Heaven and a hug that lasted for the whole night. For a long while, Cas spent most of his time following Dean around while invisible, making sure that Dean did not do anything stupid. When it was Sam’s time, Cas temporarily moved back to America and spent two whole year taking care of Dean before he got back on his feet. It ashamed Cas that those years were one of the happiest year for him, being able to be with Dean and really be himself again. He watched Dean all the time, he held him as much as could get away with and listened to Dean as his reminisced about his younger years. But then it was Dean’s time and there was no one left to hold Cas.

The Winchester line was secure with the broods. Just like with them, their offspring those after them were given the full truth of their legacies but were never forced to choose their path. Still, most had chosen to be either a hunter or a Men of Letter. And those who did not, had chosen normal profession in areas that would be beneficial to hunters and Men of Letter such as law enforcement, medicine and education. Cas watched over them as best as he could from a remote land in Australia. He lived with Jesse, who only indulged in cyber relationships, for fear of giving his child his powers even when Cas assured him the possibilities of that happening was low. There, Cas kept a beehive and spent most of his time staring the collection of photographs of him and the Winchesters. Sometimes his angelic brothers and sisters would come to the farm if they had missions nearby, mostly to check up on Cas. After Jesse died, Cas felt that there was nothing to tie him to Earth, so he went back to Heaven after revisiting the graves of all the humans that had touched his heart and made him human.

 

 

“Castiel, if only you would tend to yourself the way you do to this garden, I think you would be happier, brother,” Joshua, the Gardener of God, said as he looked at the various flowers Cas had planted in a section Joshua allowed him to tend in his spare times. Cas did not reply and continued to weed his rose bushes. He knew what Joshua would have said anyway, they had had similar conversations many times before, ever since he had chosen to be the Teacher and was given back his wings and became a Seraph with full powers once again, and begged Joshua to let have a tiny part of Heaven’s Garden. “Castiel, when will you forgive yourself and see your family?” Joshua would have said and as usual, Cas would reply with “You and the other angels are my family, we are brothers and sisters,” But he knew what Joshua meant. When will Cas be strong enough to see his most important former human charges in their personal Heaven.

The first thing Cas wanted to do when he arrived in Heaven was to visit Dean but he hesitated when he realized that Dean would have shared his heaven with Elena. So Cas visited the Novaks first. Jimmy and Amelia received him warmly, having come to terms of what had happened to them a long time ago and instead thanked him for protecting and taking care Claire until it was time for her to return to Heaven. Next, Claire and her soulmate, Noel, were happy to see him and so on, until the ones left were Bobby, Sam and Dean. Moloch, the angel assigned to guard Bobby’s section of heaven, refused Cas’s entry on grounds that Bobby had requested it so ever since after he had helped Cas breaking Metatron out of Heaven’s jail. Dumbfounded by that revelation and horrified after realizing that the Winchesters might came to similar conclusion after years of Cas inserting himself into their lives… Cas chickened out and never did see Sam and Dean.

Cas was lying among his rose bushes, staring at the stars on the night sky. Even though he was no longer on Earth and Dean was dust far longer than he was alive, Cas would always silently celebrate Dean’s birthday. He no longer baked an assortment of pies on that date, there was no one to eat them. He no longer went and pour whiskey on Dean’s grave, the gravesite no longer existed and besides, Dean’s soul was where he was, Heaven. Every time 24th January comes, Cas was tempted to sneak into Dean’s personal heaven, just to see him again, to hug him again and tell him how much Cas loved him again. Some years Ebbriel would join him in the silent celebrations, he finally remembered his past life as Bobby and sometimes would join Cas in reminiscing about his boys. Ebbriel decided against seeing them in their heaven, fearing his resolve to be the best Seraph to protect the human world would weaken. He did manage to be a Seraph and are currently the leader of the legions charged to protect the humans.

He did not realized when Chuck sat next to him. “Father… I mean, Chuck, what are you doing here?” Cas stuttered. Chuck looked at him sadly and asked, “You know how much I appreciate free will, don’t you, Cas?” “Of course, among the angels, I am the proof of free will and you didn’t change me,” Cas said. “Yeah, and I really don’t want to change that but Joshua had been hounding me to talk some sense to you… Well, his actual words was much harsher. Towards me, not you of course. Something about being a neglectful gardener… He thinks very highly of you, Castiel. Looking at your garden, I can see why. He’s also really worried for you and looking at you, Cas, I also can see why,” Chuck said. Cas did not know what to say. He looked at himself. He wore his normal heavenly robe and his appearance was also normal. There was nothing to be worried about. “Not your appearance or clothes, Castiel. How long has it been, Cas? Ah, from the moment you saw him in Hell? And you never went to him in his heaven? Well, that one is going to change. Come on, get up. Don’t defy me, Cas, I AM your father! Good,” Chuck stood up, grabbed Cas’s hand and basically carry him out of his garden. Cas found himself getting dragged to the door of Dean’s personal heaven by Chuck. He immediately turned to leave but Chuck froze him and made his body walk back to the door, opened it and walked in.

Cas looked at the room, it looked like Dean’s room at the bunker. The bed, the decorations, the weapons… Even that first edition of Dean’s favorite adult magazine. But that cannot be right, could it? Dean had moved into another room when Elena… The door opened and Dean walked in with a beer in his hand and headphones on his head. He stopped and they stared at each other, saying nothing. Cas looked away first, giving Dean the opportunity to pull back his right hand and landed a strong right hook on Cas. It was out of surprised that Cas fell onto the bed and he looked at Dean bewildered. “Dean?” Cas asked, his heart sinking. “What took you so long, Cas?” Dean shouted before cupping Cas’s face and kissed him forcefully. It took a while before Cas responded but when he did, all of his pent up love and desire for Dean came pouring out and Dean dished out his own feelings for Cas into the mix.

When they were done and lay on their stomach side by side on the bed, Cas asked Dean, “Dean, where’s Elena?” “In her own heaven, from what I know,” Dean answered nonchalantly, more intent on tracing Cas shoulder blades with his fingertips. “But you two were soulmates,” Cas argued. “Nah, I don’t think so. I mean, I loved and I cared for her but I had always known that she was not my soulmate,” Dean said. “Then who was?” Cas asked, trying to remember the many women Dean had slept with… Lisa? “You are,” Dean said and pulled Cas in for another kiss. “Me? But the Fates… Ah, ‘fate is a cruel mistress’, Atropos must have hold a grudge against me,” Cas mused and to which Dean replied, “That was an understatement, Cas. But, Chuck did say that he would punish her later. Karma is also a bitch, bitch. And more importantly you are with me now, for forever,” “Forever. I’ve waited a lifetime for this forever,” Cas said and laced his hand to Dean’s.


End file.
